How Irish Was Richard Brinsley Sheridan? - SFGate How Irish Was Richard Brinsley Sheridan? REVIEWED BY Bill Grantham, Special to The Chronicle Published 4:00 am, Sunday, November 1, 1998 A TRAITOR'S KISS The Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan , 1751-1816 By Fintan O'Toole Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 544 pages; $30 For most of us, Richard Brinsley Sheridan is the playwright who by age 28 had given the stage those perfect farces "The School for Scandal ," "The Rivals" and "The Critic" (not to mention the comic opera "The Duenna," in its day a huge hit; Byron thought it better than "The Beggar's Opera"). But Sheridan's entry in the Dictionary of National Biography describes him as "statesman and dramatist," in that order, and the subject of Fintan O'Toole's marvelous biography, "A Traitor's Kiss,"is as much the political contemporary of Edmund Burke and William Pitt as the coruscating satirist we remember today.

O'Toole, a theater critic for the New York Daily News and columnist for the Irish Times in Dublin, places Sheridan at the heart of contemporary inquiries into the nature and scope of Irish identity. How Irish was Sheridan -- a man who at age 9 left his native Dublin, never to return, and whose entire career and success depended on English audiences, money and political patronage? The question could be applied to all the great 18th century Irish writers -- Jonathan Swift and Bishop Berkeley as well as Sheridan and Burke. These were men who held English offices and styled themselves "Englishmen," yet bridled at the injustices of English rule in Ireland. They were adherents of the established Protestant Church who deplored the oppression of the Catholic faith held by the vast majority of the Irish people. In Sheridan's case, the logic of the Irish situation drew him into the company of revolutionaries inspired by the examples of the French and Americans and -- astonishingly for a man who had held ministerial office in England and was a member of the King's Privy Council -- toward the brink of treason. Relocating Sheridan as an Irishman is not an uncontroversial mission. One leading historian of modern Ireland, R.F.

Foster , has described Sheridan as "unique in his ostensible ability to jettison Irishness." (Foster has memorably described later waves of Irish writers and politicians intent on proving themselves in London as "Micks on the make.") Indeed, many of Sheridan's contemporaries found absentee Irishmen who affected to promote their country's interests in England suspicious. The Dublin parliamentarian Lord Charlemont observed: "Let it not be said that Ireland can be served in England. It never was. It is the nature of man to assimilate himself to those with whom he lives." Yet O'Toole's Sheridan, a bril liant orator, sparkling socialite, successful politician, leading theater manager and friend of the Prince of Wales , was never able to assimilate. In 1806, when he had been living in his adopted country 47 years, his tireless political enemy William Cobbett could still describe him as the "Son of an obscure Irish Player, a profession formerly proscribed by our (i.e., England's) laws." The "obscure Irish Player" was Thomas Sheridan, an actor and "orthoepist," or elocution teacher.

For O'Toole, Thomas' son Richard -- by remaining a man of the theater, by refusing many of the blandishments of office and patronage, and by maintaining a radical consistency of views even when it served him badly -- was a gentleman who resisted the assimilation that was logical to his rank. And, as a peerless spinner of words both onstage and in Parliament, O'Toole's Sheridan turned the language of the Enlightenment on itself, exposing the hypocrisy that lay behind the social veneer of sentiment and sensibility. I call this character "O'Toole's Sheridan" because others have seen a more opportunistic, less consistent side to the writer-politician. It is certainly bold of O'Toole -- in a provocative, stimulating sense -- to posit Sheridan as a precursor of "virtually all the issues that would dominate Irish politics throughout the nineteenth century," including the galvanizing of the Catholic peasantry. Sheridan was not a saint, and O'Toole does not spare us the more recognizably 18th century features of his subject -- dissolution, drunkenness, rakishness, profligacy and an attendant mental strain that at times skirted madness.

At times -- as in his discussion of Sheridan's Jewish characters -- O'Toole comes close to pleading in his attempt to rehabilitate the playwright's somewhat conventional creations. But for most of the book, O'Toole's is a persuasive portrait of a man whose adherence to principle, more than any personal weakness, ultimately brought him disappointment, isolation and near-penury. It is also an extremely moving account of one whose oratory (in a golden age of orators) was so exemplary that it could mesmerize the House of Commons for 5 1/2 hours in 1787 during efforts to impeach the governor-general of India, and yet who sank so low in his old age that he wept at the news of a few kind words from Byron.

Even in death, Sheridan received an equivocal version of his due, interred in Westminster Abbey not, as he had wished, next to his great political ally (and sometime antagonist) Charles James Fox , but in Poet's Corner, next to a playwright he lampooned in "The Critic." Sheridan grew up in the shadow of Jonathan Swift, a close friend of his grandfather's; and it is Swift's self-penned epitaph that applies with special force to the Sheridan we see portrayed in this book: "Fair LIBERTY was all his cry;/ For her he stood prepared to die;/ For her he boldly stood alone;/ For her he oft exposed his own." Latest from the SFGATE homepage: Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Facts Richard Brinsley Sheridan Facts Richard Brinsley Sheridan Quotes The British playwright and orator Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) wrote two comic masterpieces for the stage, The Rivals and The School for Scandal.

In his own time, Sheridan was equally celebrated as a great Whig orator. Richard Brinsley Sheridan was born in Dublin, Ireland, on Oct. 30, 1751. His father, Thomas, was an actor and theater manager; his mother, Frances, was the author of novels and plays. The family moved to London in 1758, and Sheridan was educated at Harrow (1762-1768). His first publication, a joint effort with a school friend, N.B. Halhead, was a metrical translation of Aristaenatus (1771). With this friend Sheridan also wrote his first play, a farce called Jupiter, which was rejected by both David Garrick and Samuel Foote. Courtship and Marriage In 1770 the Sheridans moved to Bath. There Richard, his brother Charles, and his friend Halhead were among the many who fell in love with a beautiful young singer, Elizabeth Linley. The most importunate of her admirers was a Capt. or Maj. Mathews. Terrified by his persecutions, she decided to seek shelter in a French convent, and Sheridan offered to protect her on her journey.

In March 1772 they fled to France and were secretly married there. Leaving her at the convent, Sheridan returned to England and fought two duels with Mathews. Elizabeth was brought back to Bath by her father, and Sheridan was sent to London by his, but on April 13, 1773, they were allowed to marry openly. Though at first the young couple had nothing to live on except a small dowry, in January 1775 Sheridan solved the problem of their support with the production of The Rivals at Convent Garden. A comedy of manners that blended brilliant wit with 18th-century sensibility, it became and remained a great successes. One measure of its popularity was that it gave a new word to the English language, "malapropism," based on Mrs. Malaprop's mistakes. The year 1775 was a productive one for Sheridan. In May his farce, St. Patrick's Day, or the Scheming Lieutenant, was performed, and in November Sheridan's comic opera, The Duenna, was produced with the help of his wife's father at Covent Garden.

A son, Thomas, was also born to the Sheridans in 1775. Drury Lane In June 1776 Sheridan purchased Garrick's share of the Drury Lane Theater and became its manager. No fault can be found with his theatrical sense, but misfortunes and financial carelessness plagued him in this career. At first, however, Sheridan prospered, and 2 years after purchasing Garrick's interest he was able (with his partners) to buy the other half of the theater. On May 8, 1777, Sheridan presented his new play, The School for Scandal. It was immediately, and throughout Sheridan's management, the most successful piece in the repertory of the Drury Lane. This comedy is an ingenious blending of two plots, one concerning the young, country-bred wife of a middle-aged husband who is taught town manners by a "school" of scandalmongers, the other concerning the amorous and financial adventures of the Surface brothers, whose contrasting reputations also contrast with their true characters.

In October 1779 Sheridan produced the last play of his own authorship, The Critic, in which he deftly mocked the follies of everyone, from playwright to spectator, connected with the theater. Though he continued as manager of Drury Lane, and though, in 1799, he had a hand in translations of two German plays, Pizarroand The Stranger at the age of 28 Sheridan had virtually completed the first of his careers. Parliamentary Career Sheridan had long been sympathetic to the position of Charles James Fox and his fellow Whigs; his first service to that party was his extensive contributions to their periodical, the Englishman (March 13-June 2, 1779). In October 1780 Sheridan entered Parliament as the member for Stafford. It soon became apparent that the Whigs had another great orator to add to Edmund Burke and Fox. In 1782 and 1783 Fox's friends briefly held office, and Sheridan was respectively undersecretary for foreign affairs and a secretary of the Treasury. His greatest orations, however, were delivered in the 7-year impeachment proceedings against Warren Hastings, the first governor general of British India.

On Feb. 7, 1787, Sheridan spoke for 5 hours on the crimes of Hastings against the begums (princesses) of Oudh. A typical response to this speech was that of a Mr. Logan, who, before he heard it, had written a spirited defense of Hastings. After the first hour Logan remarked, "All this is declamatory assertion without proof"; after the second, "This is a most wonderful oration"; after the third, "Mr. Hastings has acted very unjustifiably"; after the fourth, "Mr. Hastings is a most atrocious criminal"; and at the end, "Of all monsters of iniquity the most enormous is Warren Hastings!" Many of Sheridan's other parliamentary addresses were also greatly admired, but few of them were preserved. A friend of the Prince of Wales (later George IV), an ally of Fox, an independent after Fox's death, Sheridan was treasurer of the navy in the Whig administration of 1806. In 1804 the prince had appointed him receiver of the duchy of Cornwall, and in 1808 Sheridan at last began to benefit from this office.

But his fortunes were on the decline, and in 1812 he lost his seat in Parliament. Sheridan's first wife died in 1792, and in 1795 he married Esther Jane Ogle. In 1792-1794 Sheridan had to rebuild Drury Lane Theatre, incurring great debts. In 1809 it burned. The theater was again rebuilt, by subscription, but Sheridan did not receive enough for his share to prevent his being harassed by creditors before his death on July 7, 1816. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Further Reading on Richard Brinsley Sheridan The most complete modern edition of Sheridan's works is The Plays and Poems of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, edited by Raymond C. Rhodes (3 vols., 1928). The Letters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (3 vols., 1966) were well edited by Cecil Price. The earliest relatively impartial biography was by Irish poet Thomas Moore, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan (2 vols., 1825), which omits some of the information made available by Sheridan's family.

Early accounts by John Watkins, Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of … Richard Brinsley Sheridan (2 vols., 1817), and by William Smyth, Memoir of Mr. Sheridan (1840), started many false and scandalous stories. Sheridan's sister, Alicia Lefanu, replied to Watkins in her biography of her mother, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mrs. Frances Sheridan, Mother of … Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1824). Of the later accounts, recommended are those of William F. Rae, Sheridan: A Biography (2 vols., 1896), and Walter S. Sichel, Sheridan, from New and Original Material (2 vols., 1909). Raymond Rhodes wrote the most substantial critical study, Harlequin Sheridan: The Man and the Legends (1933). A good brief study is William A. Darlington, Sheridan (1933).

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN (1751-1816) This document was originally published in Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume XXIV. John George Robertson. Cambridge: University Press, 1911. pp. 845-7. Purchase Plays by Richard Brinsley Sheridan RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, third son of Thomas and Frances Sheridan, was born in Dublin on the 30th of October, 1751. There is a story, discredited by Mr. Fraser Rae, that Mrs. Sheridan on placing her sons with their first schoolmaster, Samuel Whyte, said that she had been the only instructor of her children hitherto, and that they would exercise the schoolmaster in the quality of patience, "for two such impenetrable dunces she had never met with." One of the children thus humorously described was Richard Brinsley, then aged seven. At the age of eleven he was sent to Harrow school. Sheridan was extremely popular at school, winning somehow, Dr.

Parr confesses, "the esteem and even admiration of all his schoolfellows"; and he acquired, according to the same authority, more learning than he is usually given credit for. He left Harrow at the age of seventeen, and was placed under the care of a tutor. He was also trained by his father in daily elocution, and put through a course of English reading. He had fencing and riding lessons at Angelo's. After leaving Harrow he kept up a correspondence with a school friend who had gone to Oxford. With this youth, N.B. Halhed, he concocted various literary plans, and between them they actually executed and published (1771) metrical translations of Aristaenetus. In conjunction with Halhed he wrote a farce entitled Jupiter, which was refused by both Garrick and Foote and remained in MS., but is of interest as containing the same device of a rehearsal which was afterwards worked out with such brilliant effect in The Critic. Some of the dialogue is very much in Sheridan's mature manner.

Extracts given from papers written in the seven years between his leaving Harrow and the appearance of The Rivals--sketches of unfinished plays, poems, political letters and pamphlets--show that he was far from idle. The removal of the family to Bath in 1770-1771 led to an acquaintance with the daughters of the composer Thomas Linley. The eldest daughter, Elizabeth Ann (b. 1754), a girl of sixteen, the prima donna of her father's concerts, was exceedingly beautiful, and had many suitors, among them Sheridan, N.B. Halhed and a certain Major Mathews. To protect her from this man's persecutions, Sheridan, who seems to have acted at first only as a confidential friend, carried out the romantic plan of escorting Miss Linley, in March 1772, to a nunnery in France. Sheridan returned and fought two duels with Mathews, which made a considerable sensation at the time. The pair had gone through a ceremony of marriage in the course of their flight, but Sheridan kept the marriage secret, and was sternly denied access to Miss Linley by her father, who did not consider him an eligible suitor.

Sheridan was sent to Waltham Abbey, in Essex, to continue his studies, especially in mathematics. He was entered at the Middle Temple on the 6th of April 1773, and a week later he was openly married to Miss Linley. His daring start in lafe after this happy marriage showed a confidence in his genius which was justified by its success. Although he had no income, and no capital beyond a few thousand pounds brought by his wife, he took a house in Orchard Street, Portman Square, furnished it "in the most costly style," and proceeded to return on something like an equal footing the hospitalities of the fashionable world. His first comedy, The Rivals, was produced at Covent Garden on 17th January, 1775. It is said to have been not so favourably received on its first night, owing to its length and to the bad playing of the part of Sir Lucius O'Trigger. But the defects were remedied before the second performance, which was deferred to the 28th of the month, and the piece at once took that place on the stage which it has never lost. His second piece, St.

Patrick's Day, or the Scheming Lieutenant, a lively farce, was written for the benefit performance (2nd of May 1775) of Lawrence Cinch, who had succeeded as Sir Lucius. In November 1775, with the assistance of his father-in-law, he produced the comic opera of The Duenna, which was played 75 times at Covent Garden during that season. Sheridan now began to negotiate with Garrick for the purchase of his share of Drury Lane, and the bargain was completed in June 1776. The sum paid by Sheridan and his partners, Thomas Linley and Dr. Ford, for the half share was £35,000; of this Sheridan contributed £10,000. The money was raised on mortgage, Sheridan contributing only £1300 in cash. Two years afterwards Sheridan and his friends bought the other half of the property for £35,000. From the first the direction of the theatre would seem to have been mainly in the hands of Sheridan, who derived very material assistance from his wife.

In February 1777 he produced his version of Vanbrugh's Relapse, under the title of A Trip to Scarborough. This is printed among Sheridan's works, but he has no more title to the authorship than Colley Cibber to that of Richard III. His chief task was to remove indecencies; he added very little to the dialogue. The School for Scandal was produced on the 8th of May 1777. Mrs. Abington , who had played Miss Hoyden in the Trip, played Lady Teazle, who may be regarded as a Miss Hoyden developed by six months' experience of marriage and town life. The lord chamberlain refused to license the play, and was only persuaded on grounds of personal friendship with Sheridan to alter his decision.

There are tales of the haste with which the conclusion of The School for Scandal was written, of a stratagem by which the last act was got out of him by the anxious company, and of the fervent "Amen" written on the last page of the copy by the prompter, in response the the author's "Finished at last, thank God!" But, although the conception was thus hurriedly completed, we know from Sheridan's sister that the idea of a "scandalous college" had occurred to him five years before in connection with his own experiences in Bath. His dificulty was to find a story sufficiently dramatic in its incidents to form a subject for the machinations of the character-slayers. He seems to have tried more than one plot, and in the end to have desperately forced two separate conceptions together. The dialogue is so brilliant throughout, and the auction scene and the screen scene so effective, that the construction of the comedy meets with little criticism. The School for Scandal, though it has not the unity of The Rivals, nor the same wealth of broadly humorous incident, is universally regarded as Sheridan's masterpiece.

He might have settled the doubts and worries of authorship with Puff's reflection: "What is the use of a good plot except to bring in good things?" Sheridan's farce, The Critic, was produced on the 29th of October 1779, The School for Scandal meantime continuing to draw larger houses than any other play every time it was put on the stage. In The Critic the laughing infirmities of all classes connected with the stage -- authors, actors, patrons and audience -- are touched off with the lightest of hands; the fun is directed, not at individuals, but at absurdities that grow out of the circumstances of the stage as naturally and inevitably as weeds in a garden. It seems that he had accumulated notes for another comedy to be called Affectation, but his only dramatic composition during the remaining thirty-six years of his life was Pizarro, produced in 1799 -- a tragedy in which he made liberal use of some of the arts ridiculed in the person of Mr. Puff. He also revised for the stage Benjamin Thompson's translation, The Stranger, of Kotzebue's Menschenhass und Reue.

He entered parliament for Stafford in 1780, as the friend and ally of Charles James Fox. Apparently he owed his election for Stafford to substantial arguments. He is said to have paid the burgesses five guineas each for the honour of representing them, beside gifts in dinners and ale to the non-voting part of the community, for their interest and applause. His first speech in parliament was to defend himself against the charge of bribery, and was well received. He spoke little for a time and chiefly on financial questions, but soon took a place among the best speakers in the House. Congress recognized his services in opposing the war in America by offering him a gift of £20,000 which, however, he refused. Under the wing of Fox he filled subordinate offices in the short-lived ministries of 1782 and 1783. He was under-secretary for foreign affairs in the Rockingham ministry, and a secretary of the treasury in the Coalition ministry. In debate he had the keenest of eyes for the weak places in an opponent's argument, and the happy art of putting them in an irresistibly ludicrous light without losing his good temper or his presence of mind.

In those heated days of parliamentary strife he was almost the only man of mark that was never called out, and yet he had no match in the weapon of ridicule. Sheridan found his great opportunity in the impeachment of Warren Hastings. His speeches in that proceeding were by the unanimous acknowledgment of his contemporaries among the greatest delivered in that generation of great orators. The first was on the 7th of February 1787, on the charges brought against Hastings with regard to the begums or princesses of the Oude. Sheridan spoke for more than five hours, and the effect of his oratory was such that it was unanimously agreed to adjourn and postpone the final decision till the House should be in a calmer mood. Of this, and of his last great speech on the subject in 1794, only brief abstracts have been preserved; but with the second, the four days' speech delivered in his capacity of manager of the trial, in Westminster Hall, on the occasion so brilliantly described by Macaulay, posterity has been more fortunate. Gurney's verbatim reports of the speeches on both sites at the trial were published at Sir G.

Cornewall Lewis' instigation in 1859, and from them we are able to form an idea of Sheridan's power as an orator. There are passages here and there of gaudy rhetoric, loose ornament and declamatory hyperbole; but the strong common sense, close argumentative force and masterly presentation of telling facts enable us to understand the impression produced by the speech at the time. From the time of the break-up of the Whig party on the secession of Burke he was more or less an "independent member," and his isolation was complete after the death of Fox. When Burke denounced the Fench Revolution, Sheridan joined with Fox in vindicating the principle of non-intervention. He maintained that the French people should be allowed to settle their constitution and manage their affairs in their own way. But when the republic was succeeded by the empire, and it became apparent that France under Napoleon would interfere with the affairs of its neighbors, he employed his eloquence in denouncing Napoleon and urging the prosecution of the war. One of his most celebrated speeches was delivered in support of strong measures against the mutineers at the Nore.

He was one of the few members who actively opposed the union of the English and Irish parliaments. When the Whigs came into power in 1806 Sheridan was appointed treasurer of the navy, and became a member of the Privy Council. After Fox's death he succeeded his chief in the representation of Westminster, and aspired to succeed him as leader of the party, but this claim was not allowed, and thenceforward Sheridan fought for his own hand. When the prince became regent in 1811 Sheridan's private influence with him helped to exclude the Whigs from power. Throughout his parliamentary career Sheridan was one of the boon companions of the prince, and his champion in parliament in some dubious matters of payment of debts. But he always resented any imputation that he was the prince's confidential adviser or mouthpiece. A certain proud and sensitive independence was one of the most marked features in Sheridan's parliamentary career. After a coolness arose between him and his Whig allies he refused a place for his son from the government, lest there should be any suspicion in the public mind that his support had been bought. His last years were harassed by debt and disappointment.

He sat in parliament for Westminster in 1806-1807. At the general election of 1807 he stood again for Westminster and was defeated, but was returned as member for Ilchester, at the expense, apparently, of the prince of Wales. In 1812 he failed to secure a seat at Stafford. He could not raise money enough to buy the seat. He had quarrelled with the Prince Regent, and seems to have had none but obscure friends to stand by him. As a member of parliament he had been safe against arrest for debt, but now that this protection was lost his creditors closed in upon him, and the history of his life from this time till his death in 1816 is one of the most painful passages in the biography of great men. It may be regarded as certain, however, that the description of the utter destitution and misery of the last weeks of his life given in the Croker Papers (i. pp. 288-312, ed. L.J. Jennings) is untrue.

In any attempt to judge of Sheridan as he was apart from his works, it is necessary to make considerable deductions from the mass of floating anecdotes that have gathered round his name. It was not without reason that his grand-daughter Mrs. Norton denounced the unfairness of judging the real man from unauthenticated stories. The real Sheridan was not a pattern of decorous respectability, but we may fairly believe that he was very far from being the Sheridan of vulgar legend. Against stories about his reckless management of his affairs we must set the broad facts that he had no source of income but Drury Lane theatre, that he bore from it for thirty years all the expenses of a fashionable life, and that the theatre was twice rebuilt during his proprietorship, the first time (1791) on account of its having been pronounced unsafe, and the second (1809) after a disastrous fire. Enough was lost in this way to account ten times over for all his debts. The records of his wild bets in the betting book of Brooks' Club date from the years after the loss, in 1792, of his first wife, to whom he was devotedly attached.

He married again in 1795, his second wife being Esther Jane, daughter of Newton Ogle, dean of Winchester. The reminiscences of his son's tutor, Mr. Smyth, show anxious and fidgetty family habits, curiously at variance with the accepted tradition of his imperturbable recklessness. He died on the 7th of July 1816, and was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. Sheridan's only son by his first marriage, THOMAS SHERIDAN (1775-1817), was a poet of some merit. He became colonial treasurer at the Cape of Good Hope. His wife, Caroline Henrietta, née Callander (1779-1851), wrote three novels, which had some success at the time. She received, after her husband's death, quarters at Hampton Court, and is described by Fanny Kemble as more beautiful than anybody but her daughters. The eldest child, HELEN SELINA (1807-1867), married Commander Price Blackwood, afterwards Baron Dufferin.

Her husband died in 1841, and in 1862 she consented to a ceremony of marriage with George Hay, Earl of Gifford, who died a month later. Her Songs, Poems and Verses (1894) were published, with a memoir, by her son, the marquess of Dufferin. The second daughter, CAROLINE, became Mrs. Norton (q.v.). The youngest, JANE GEORGINA, married Edward Adolphus Seymour, afterwards 12th duke of Somerset. Richard Brinsley Sheridan facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Richard Brinsley Sheridan COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. Richard Brinsley Sheridan The British playwright and orator Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) wrote two comic masterpieces for the stage, The Rivals and The School for Scandal. In his own time, Sheridan was equally celebrated as a great Whig orator. Richard Brinsley Sheridan was born in Dublin, Ireland, on Oct. 30, 1751.

His father, Thomas, was an actor and theater manager; his mother, Frances, was the author of novels and plays. The family moved to London in 1758, and Sheridan was educated at Harrow (1762-1768). His first publication, a joint effort with a school friend, N.B. Halhead, was a metrical translation of Aristaenatus (1771). With this friend Sheridan also wrote his first play, a farce called Jupiter, which was rejected by both David Garrick and Samuel Foote. Courtship and Marriage In 1770 the Sheridans moved to Bath. There Richard, his brother Charles, and his friend Halhead were among the many who fell in love with a beautiful young singer, Elizabeth Linley. The most importunate of her admirers was a Capt. or Maj. Mathews. Terrified by his persecutions, she decided to seek shelter in a French convent, and Sheridan offered to protect her on her journey. In March 1772 they fled to France and were secretly married there. Leaving her at the convent, Sheridan returned to England and fought two duels with Mathews.

Elizabeth was brought back to Bath by her father, and Sheridan was sent to London by his, but on April 13, 1773, they were allowed to marry openly. Though at first the young couple had nothing to live on except a small dowry, in January 1775 Sheridan solved the problem of their support with the production of The Rivals at Convent Garden. A comedy of manners that blended brilliant wit with 18th-century sensibility, it became and remained a great successes. One measure of its popularity was that it gave a new word to the English language, "malapropism," based on Mrs. Malaprop's mistakes. The year 1775 was a productive one for Sheridan. In May his farce, St. Patrick's Day, or the Scheming Lieutenant, was performed, and in November Sheridan's comic opera, The Duenna, was produced with the help of his wife's father at Covent Garden. A son, Thomas, was also born to the Sheridans in 1775. Drury Lane In June 1776 Sheridan purchased Garrick's share of the Drury Lane Theater and became its manager.

No fault can be found with his theatrical sense, but misfortunes and financial carelessness plagued him in this career. At first, however, Sheridan prospered, and 2 years after purchasing Garrick's interest he was able (with his partners) to buy the other half of the theater. On May 8, 1777, Sheridan presented his new play, The School for Scandal. It was immediately, and throughout Sheridan's management, the most successful piece in the repertory of the Drury Lane. This comedy is an ingenious blending of two plots, one concerning the young, country-bred wife of a middle-aged husband who is taught town manners by a "school" of scandalmongers, the other concerning the amorous and financial adventures of the Surface brothers, whose contrasting reputations also contrast with their true characters. In October 1779 Sheridan produced the last play of his own authorship, The Critic, in which he deftly mocked the follies of everyone, from playwright to spectator, connected with the theater.

Though he continued as manager of Drury Lane, and though, in 1799, he had a hand in translations of two German plays, Pizarroand The Stranger at the age of 28 Sheridan had virtually completed the first of his careers. Parliamentary Career Sheridan had long been sympathetic to the position of Charles James Fox and his fellow Whigs; his first service to that party was his extensive contributions to their periodical, the Englishman (March 13-June 2, 1779). In October 1780 Sheridan entered Parliament as the member for Stafford. It soon became apparent that the Whigs had another great orator to add to Edmund Burke and Fox. In 1782 and 1783 Fox's friends briefly held office, and Sheridan was respectively undersecretary for foreign affairs and a secretary of the Treasury. His greatest orations, however, were delivered in the 7-year impeachment proceedings against Warren Hastings, the first governor general of British India. On Feb. 7, 1787, Sheridan spoke for 5 hours on the crimes of Hastings against the begums (princesses) of Oudh.

A typical response to this speech was that of a Mr. Logan, who, before he heard it, had written a spirited defense of Hastings. After the first hour Logan remarked, "All this is declamatory assertion without proof"; after the second, "This is a most wonderful oration"; after the third, "Mr. Hastings has acted very unjustifiably"; after the fourth, "Mr. Hastings is a most atrocious criminal"; and at the end, "Of all monsters of iniquity the most enormous is Warren Hastings!" Many of Sheridan's other parliamentary addresses were also greatly admired, but few of them were preserved. A friend of the Prince of Wales (later George IV), an ally of Fox, an independent after Fox's death, Sheridan was treasurer of the navy in the Whig administration of 1806. In 1804 the prince had appointed him receiver of the duchy of Cornwall, and in 1808 Sheridan at last began to benefit from this office. But his fortunes were on the decline, and in 1812 he lost his seat in Parliament.

Sheridan's first wife died in 1792, and in 1795 he married Esther Jane Ogle. In 1792-1794 Sheridan had to rebuild Drury Lane Theatre, incurring great debts. In 1809 it burned. The theater was again rebuilt, by subscription, but Sheridan did not receive enough for his share to prevent his being harassed by creditors before his death on July 7, 1816. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Further Reading The most complete modern edition of Sheridan's works is The Plays and Poems of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, edited by Raymond C. Rhodes (3 vols., 1928). The Letters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (3 vols., 1966) were well edited by Cecil Price. The earliest relatively impartial biography was by Irish poet Thomas Moore, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan (2 vols., 1825), which omits some of the information made available by Sheridan's family.

Early accounts by John Watkins, Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of … Richard Brinsley Sheridan (2 vols., 1817), and by William Smyth, Memoir of Mr. Sheridan (1840), started many false and scandalous stories. Sheridan's sister, Alicia Lefanu, replied to Watkins in her biography of her mother, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mrs. Frances Sheridan, Mother of … Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1824). Of the later accounts, recommended are those of William F. Rae, Sheridan: A Biography (2 vols., 1896), and Walter S. Sichel, Sheridan, from New and Original Material (2 vols., 1909). Raymond Rhodes wrote the most substantial critical study, Harlequin Sheridan: The Man and the Legends (1933). A good brief study is William A. Darlington, Sheridan (1933). □ Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

MLA Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751–1816) Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY (1751–1816) SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY (1751–1816), Irish playwright, theater manager, and politician. Sheridan was born in Dublin shortly before 4 November 1751, the day when he was baptized. His father was Thomas Sheridan, an Irish Protestant actor and theater manager; his mother was Frances Sheridan, who became well known as a writer of novels, including The Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph (1761) and the Oriental tale The History of Nourjahad (1767). The family moved to England , where Sheridan attended, and disliked, Harrow School, until 1770 when he left and moved, again with his family, to Bath.

Early efforts at writing included Jupiter, a farce that prefigures The Critic and that was rejected for production by Sheridan's future colleague David Garrick; verse for the Bath Chronicle; and fragments of political essays. In Bath he met and eloped with the singer Eliza Linley (1754–1795), but the validity of their marriage was contested by both families and by another admirer of Linley's with whom Sheridan fought two duels. Although the families eventually dropped their opposition to the marriage, Sheridan remained very short of money, having moved to London to study law in 1773. His first play was the comedy The Rivals, staged at Covent Garden in January 1775. It is a polished and urbane "comedy of manners" whose satirical targets include the corruption of language by Mrs. Malaprop (who famously describes another character as "as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile "), and the corruption of morals in the contemporary cult of "sentimentality." After a near failure on the first night, it went on to achieve spectacular success and to bring Sheridan both money and aristocratic contacts.

Sheridan went on to write a string of brilliant and successful comedies: The farce St. Patrick's Day was produced in May 1775 and The Duenna, an operatic play, followed in November 1775. In 1776 Sheridan became manager and part-owner of the Drury Lane Theatre. A Trip to Scarborough, a loose adaptation of John Vanbrugh's comedy The Relapse, was staged there in 1777, followed in May of that year by the classic comedy The School for Scandal in which a hypocritical "man of feeling" is contrasted with his rakish but good-hearted younger brother in a comedy set in the world of newspaper columns and society gossip. In 1779 Sheridan became the sole owner of the Drury Lane Theatre, where he produced The Critic, or A Tragedy Rehearsed in the same year. 1780 marked a turning point in Sheridan's career: he spent over £1000 securing election as a member of Parliament for Stafford and ceased to write for the theater.

A political ally of Charles James Fox and the Whigs, he joined the government in 1782 as the undersecretary of foreign affairs, and in 1783 became secretary of the treasury. His most famous parliamentary interventions, however, related to the impeachment of Warren Hastings, governor of India . A particular facet of the case related to the Begums of Oude, whom Hastings was alleged to have unlawfully deprived of their property: Sheridan discussed the case in a five-hour speech on 7 February 1787 that even his opponents acknowledged as "the most splendid display of eloquence and talent which has been exhibited in the House of Commons during the present reign" (Bingham, p. 237). Politically, Sheridan also argued against the Act of Union, and against press censorship. However, Sheridan himself was sinking into debt. The Drury Lane Theatre was declared unsafe in 1792 and had to be demolished; Sheridan himself borrowed the money for the building of a new theater on the site. After the death of his first wife, Sheridan married in 1795 the nineteen-year-old Esther Ogle, daughter of the dean of Winchester.

In 1799 Sheridan even returned to dramatic writing, and his tragedy Pizarro, an adaptation from August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue's The Spaniards in Peru , earned enough money to gain him a brief financial reprieve; but in 1802, with debts on all sides, the Drury Lane Theatre went into receivership. At the same time, his political career was stalling. In the 1806 "ministry of all the talents," Sheridan was made treasurer of the navy, but this relatively minor post did not carry cabinet rank. In 1809 the new Drury Lane Theatre burned down. Although, characteristically, he was able to joke about it—he is said to have watched from a nearby coffeehouse, remarking, "a man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside"—the fire made his financial ruin unavoidable and marked the end of his ownership of the theater. Sheridan had been a friend of Prince George (later King George IV) and should have benefited from George's elevation to Prince Regent in 1811, but the prince's favor proved short-lived.

The following year Sheridan lost his seat in Parliament, and although the prince supplied him with £3000 to buy his way back in, Sheridan spent the money clearing personal debts. In 1813 Sheridan was again imprisoned for debt. He lived in poverty and alcoholism until his death on 7 July 1816. See also Drama: English ; English Literature and Language ; Hastings, Warren . BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Sheridan, Richard Brinsley. The Dramatic Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Edited by Cecil Price. 2 vols. Oxford, 1973. ——. The Letters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Edited by Cecil Price. 3 vols. Oxford, 1966. Secondary Sources The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright The Columbia University Press Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1751–1816, English dramatist and politician, b. Dublin. His father, Thomas Sheridan, was an actor and teacher of elocution and his mother, Frances Sheridan, published two novels and a successful play. Sheridan was educated by tutors and at Harrow.

After his elopement in 1773 with Elizabeth, daughter of the composer Thomas Linley, Sheridan began writing for the theater and in 1776 became part owner and director of the Drury Lane Theatre. His masterpieces are The Rivals (1775) and The School for Scandal (1777), comedies of manners that blend the brilliant wit of the Restoration with 18th-century sensibility. Both plays affectionately satirize fashionable society with its materialism, gossip, and hypocrisy. Although each ridicules sentimentalism, neither is itself entirely free of that attribute. The Critic (1779) was a dramatic burlesque modeled on The Rehearsal by the 2d duke of Buckingham. Sheridan's other works include the comic opera The Duenna (1775) and A Trip to Scarborough (1777), an adaptation of The Relapse by Vanbrugh. Entering Parliament in 1780, he allied himself with the Whigs and became one of the most brilliant orators of his time. He played a prominent part in the impeachment of Warren Hastings and with Charles James Fox defended the French Revolution.

During the course of his political career he was secretary of the treasury (1783), treasurer of the navy (1806), and member of the Privy Council (1806). A close friend of the prince regent, he was a leader of London society. The burning in 1809 of the new Drury Lane Theatre virtually ruined Sheridan financially. He was arrested and imprisoned for debt in 1813. After his death, he was given a splendid funeral by his wealthy former friends. See his plays ed. by C. Price (2 vol., 1973); his letters ed. by C. Price (3 vol., 1966); biographies by W. Sichel (1909), M. Bingham (1972), and F. O'Toole (1998); M. S. Auburn, Sheridan's Comedies (1977); J. Loftis, Sheridan and the Drama of Georgian England (1977). Cite this article The Oxford Companion to British History © The Oxford Companion to British History 2002, originally published by Oxford University Press 2002.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751–1816). The son of an Irish actor, Sheridan achieved fame as both dramatist and politician, making his way by merit, with the additional advantage of influential friends, notably Charles Fox and the prince of Wales . Sheridan's major works were all produced before entering Parliament in 1780: The Rivals (1775), The Duenna (1775), The School for Scandal (1777), and The Critic (1779). ‘Sheridan’, according to Horace Walpole , was ‘one of the most perfect comic writers … his plots are sufficiently deep, without clumsy entanglement’ and his ‘characters strictly in nature—wit without affectation’. Sheridan was a superb political orator, achieving fame during the campaign against Warren Hastings ; one memorable speech, on 8 February 1787, lasted an astonishing 5 hours and 40 minutes. For all his ability, Sheridan never attained cabinet rank, and served only as under-secretary at the Foreign Office (1782), Treasury secretary (1783), and treasurer of the navy (1806–7).

His predominant loyalty was to Fox; but Sheridan's intrigues in the Regency crisis were not approved. Mutual antagonism between Sheridan and Burke contributed to the disintegration of the Whig Party in the 1790s, with Sheridan flaunting his admiration for the French principles Burke despised. Sheridan never became the revolutionary some anticipated, and was a patriot with regard to Napoleonic France . His private life was eventful, even disreputable: he cheated openly on both his wives, drank to excess, and borrowed extensively from friends. He died in straitened circumstances, caused partly by losses incurred from his involvement with Drury Lane theatre. David Wilkinson

Question: Give a year in the life of Irish playwright and poet Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
Answer: 1751-1816